


Lift The Both Of Us

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers
Genre: M/M, PTSD, Tony Has Issues, steve makes things better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:37:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve breathes out, and it’s too shaky. “I- I just think you should talk to someone about it. Me. Um. I know we’re not that close, but- I respect you, and I consider you a friend, and- and I want you to be okay.”<br/>Or, the one where Tony talks about Yinsen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lift The Both Of Us

“Tony?”

Tony grunts and starts to turn, but he’s caught off guard by Steve’s expression- he’s seen that look on him before. The stiff line of his shoulders, the soft eyes, the soldier-posture.

Steve, always Steve, always  _Cap_ , doesn’t square his shoulders like Tony expects him to, because that’s what Captain America would do. Instead, he glances at Tony from under his eyelashes, and says, “Who’s Yinsen?”

Tony can’t stop the flinch. He rocks backwards slightly, and Steve obviously notices, because his eyes widen and he starts forwards.

“I mean, I didn’t- you named a thing after him, and the only other thing you named after someone was Maria, so I assumed-”

Tony holds up a hand, and Steve halts in his tracks- “I’m fine. Uh, he was a guy that I knew.”

Tony can feel Steve’s eyes on him- warm, clear, too stupidly fucking blue.

He hears rather than feels the words leave his mouth, like coal slipping over his tongue, the silt in his split cheek again, and the water, always the water, water in his hair, his eyes, blinding him, choking him, wrapping liquid fingers around his lungs- “In Afghanistan.”

It’s too quiet.

It’s too quiet, and Tony’s eyes are trained determinedly at a spot over Steve’s head, and he hears Steve’s throat click.

“Oh,” Steve says. “I- oh. Um. Okay.” He shifts, and Tony watches his hands make an aborted move upwards, like he was going to put his hands in his pockets but then thought better of it.

When Tony finally looks at his face, Steve is looking at the cold blue hum of the arc reactor.

Tony startles, too shocked, too fucking caught off-guard by such a  _typical_ reaction, and Steve blanches. “Oh, my god, I’m sorry, I- that’s- that’s where you got that, right? The arc reactor?”

Steve looks amazingly out of place. Everything about him is still stiff, awkward, and Tony wants to shove him, wants to mess him up, wants to fuck up that stupid blonde hair and perfect lips and those polite nods.

So Tony locks his jaw, twists his mouth into a smile. “Yeah. Hey, don’t you have somewhere to be, Cap?”

Steve’s eyebrows raise slightly, and Tony wants to see him  _react_ \- wants him to punch him, hit him, scream at him, yell something about Howard, or his likeness to him, how they both have the same bullshit smiles, or how his father has always been ten times better than him, or that one time that Tony had thought  _hey, when the hell did I put up a picture of dad_  and it had turned out to be a mirror and he had felt the familiar surge and had put his fist right through it, and the blood had ran down the blades of his torn-up fingers and Tony had thought _, if you could just see me now, you fucking_ -

“You never talk about it.”

Tony blinks, and Steve is looking at him with that steady gaze that he uses to stare down talk show hosts.

Steve continues: “I mean, I get why you never talk about it, and you- uh, you’re not exactly the most talkative person-”

Tony huffs a laugh, and Steve backtracks: “I mean, about those types of… things. Personal, um, things. And I get it, I do. I just, uh.”

“Y’know, usually it’s me doing the babbling, Cap,” Tony says, rubbing his fingers over his knuckles. “But kudos for trying. It’s kind of adorable.”

Steve flushes, that delicious flush that seems hugely involuntarily and goes all the way down his neck, and steps forwards. “Have you talked to someone about it?”

Tony laughs again, a bit too loud and on the wrong side of bitter. “ _Talk_  to someone- what, you mean a shrink? I’m fine, Cap, honestly. It’s nothing I can’t handle, and it’s not going to damage the team-”

“I’m not worried about the team,” Steve says, taking yet another step forwards. “I’m worried about you.”

Tony holds his ground, although it’s fucking hard- he wants to run, Steve is too close and it’s setting off warning signals. If he reached out, he could splay his hand on his chest. The idea sets off something like hunger, a string of  _want_  that pulls him apart from the inside out.

He wets his lips. “I’m fine.”

Steve is still looking at him, and it sets Tony’s skin alight. There’s lightning tightening around his nervous system, curling around his bones, around his makeshift-heart and striking a match. He’s burning, he’s ablaze, he has fire crawling under his skin,  _Steve_  is under his skin and he’s not getting out any time soon.

Steve says, in that quiet-yet-firm way that Tony hates to love, “You’re not.”

The words make him jerk slightly, but then he’s  _back_ , baby, 100-watt smile and easy posture and it’s crumpling in front of Steve, like it never stood a chance, like Steve sees through him, sees  _him_ , and it-

“Iron Man’s not going to be a liability,” Tony says. “I-”

“I’m not talking about  _Iron Man_ ,” Steve sighs, almost growls, stepping forwards again, and now he’s right in Tony’s face, too close- “I’m talking about Tony. Tony Stark, remember?”

Tony swallows, hyper-aware of Steve’s hot, heavy breath on his skin. “It rings a bell.”

Steve breathes out, and it’s too shaky. “I- I just think you should talk to someone about it. Me. Um. I know we’re not that close, but- I respect you, and I consider you a friend, and- and I want you to be okay.”

Tony’s mouth is hanging open. When he realizes, he snaps it shut. “I- what?”

Steve says, “I want,” and his eyes rake over him, making Tony shiver, and then Steve’s gulping a breath like he’s drowning. “I want you to be okay, Tony.”

Tony drops his gaze, working his jaw. When he glances up again, Steve is still staring, and Tony feels heavy, like he has anvils wrapped around his ankles and he’s being dragged down.

“Uh,” Tony says, and clears his throat, because he’s  _Tony Stark,_ goddamnit, he doesn’t do this. “What, so I just start talking?”

Steve smiles- the barest hint of his mouth tugging upwards, but it’s there. “Yes. If you want to.”

Tony says, “I-” and then stops, because he’s suddenly at a loss. Tony Stark has been rendered speechless, someone call the tabloids.

“Uh,” Tony says. “What- what do you want to know?”

Steve says, like he’s been waiting for this: “Tell me about Yinsen.”

For a second, Tony just opens his mouth wordlessly, because what the hell can he say? How could he describe the guy that made him keep going, made him push, made him actually get the hell out rather than sit there and rot- “He- he had sweaty hands.”

Tony rubs his own hand over his chin, remembering. “He, uh. Like, they were always sweaty, y’know? No matter what he was doing. Eating, working, shaving- I used to joke that one day he’d slip, and, uh. Very steady, though. Hands, I mean. Never dropped anything, despite all the sweat. He, uh. He shaved every day, no matter what. Even in the dark, he- he used to get cuts all over his face. He- he used to tell me stories about his kids. Alia and- and, uh, Remmie.”

Tony’s eyes are wet. Why the fuck are his eyes wet? “They, uh. Alia wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Said- said it was better than being a dummy scientist like her dad, apparently. She was, uh. She was eight. Remmie was… twelve. Their mom, they- they both looked like their mom. Or at least that’s what Yinsen said, I don’t-”

He tries to swallow the lump in his throat, and fails miserably. He glares at the ground for a few seconds, trying to keep it together, and the next words come out in a croak: “They were killed with weapons from Stark Industries. He said he didn’t blame me, but, uh. Yeah.” He chuckles lowly. “What can you do after that, y’know? ‘Sorry I killed your family’?”

“That was Obidiah,” Steve says, and Tony’s head finally comes up.

Steve hasn’t taken his eyes away from Tony’s face the entire time. “I read the report. He sold those weapons, not you.”

“I’m the one who made them.” Tony clenches his teeth, feeling too full, like he’s going to come to pieces any second now. “I’m the one who made sure the shrapnel would completely eradicate them. Make damn well sure they wouldn’t be put back together. That it would rip through their body, it- Fuck, I  _murdered_  innocent-”

“You didn’t do it,” Steve says, and it slams around the room. “It wasn’t you, Tony.”

Tony bites down hard on his tongue, the pain sparking deep, and it’s a while before he brings himself to speak.

He swallows a few times. “Yinsen was, uh. He was a good guy. Saved my life. A few times, actually, with the car battery-”

“With the  _what_?”

Tony looks up, and Steve’s eyes are like blown glass.

“Uh,” Tony says. “The car battery. They didn’t tell you that? I was attached to a car battery instead of the arc reactor for six weeks.”

Steve’s looking at him like- not pity, not anything Tony can place.

He doesn’t say  _I’m sorry_  or anything that everyone else has bullshitted their way through, that Tony’s expecting.

Instead, he exhales shallowly. “I wish you didn’t have to go through that,” he says quietly, like a benediction.

Tony stays shock-still as Steve raises his hand, watches the trajectory of it as Steve traces his thumb across the cool expanse of Tony’s cheek, then the pads of his fingers are running over Tony’s mouth, and his brain shortwires into  _oh_  and  _Steve_ , and he’s leaning into it before he knows what he’s doing.

Steve’s close, too close and not close enough, and Tony’s gaze goes hazy as Steve’s fingers lower slightly to skim over the grain of his stubble, along his chin, then up along his other cheek, along the small scar, the small, patchy burn.

He touches Tony like he’s breakable, like he’s careful, like he wants to keep him safe, or maybe just keep him.

Steve sucks in a breath and drops his hand, looking guilty. “Sorry. That was… out of line.”

Tony croaks, “Didn’t hear me complaining.”

Steve’s laugh is strangled when it comes out. “I- Tony, look, you can talk to me if you want to, okay?”

Tony says, “Back at you.”

He still feels the ghost of Steve’s hand on his cheek, trailing down.


End file.
